


raise the dead

by apathetic_revenant



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Gen, Post-Game, because no one bled in the game even when they got shot, but this fic is less stylized than the game so there's some blood, canon injuries but non-canon levels of blood, spoilers ahoy, time travel related memory loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-06-30 18:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15757482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apathetic_revenant/pseuds/apathetic_revenant
Summary: Things are, undoubtedly, better this way, but still...complicated.





	1. remains of the day

The first thing Jowd feels in the new, brighter, better timeline is pain.

The future that wasn't shatters into the present that is, the monochrome of the world of the dead gives way to the monochrome of lowering twilight, and he feels his soul go flying, as it did back in that darkened prison when he rose from the dead, magnetically drawn to the body it once again belongs to. His self shivers and stretches out into its new physicality, settling into every muscle and bone and nerve, and the first message those nerves send back is _pain_.

He...remembers the pain. He has been feeling this pain for the last few minutes. Only—only—he also remembers that in the last few minutes he felt nothing at all, was in a place beyond pain, and now--

For a moment everything is so overwhelming all he can do is kneel in the damp grass and gasp.

The meteorite fragment. Of course. In the unfeeling world of the dead he had only been concerned with how the shock had caused his fingers to tighten on the trigger of his gun. The injury itself, placed against everything they were trying to prevent, seemed utterly inconsequential. It feels slightly less so now.

Slowly he lowers his other knee to the ground and looks down to survey the damage. His knee is a ruin. Blood is soaking his trouser leg and trickling onto the grass. His head swims. From very far away he catches himself thinking sardonically that of all the injuries he expected to receive on this job, being impaled by a meteorite was not on the list.

No—not impaled. He knows because he is bleeding. He is in pain. He feels. The fragment went straight through his knee and out the other side, and because of that, he is alive.

That thought is what grounds him, chases away the clouds enough for him to think. Pain is not the worst thing that can happen to a person—and this is not the worst pain he has felt.

There's...something he must do, he thinks, no time to be sitting around here—but that's difficult to think of because right now everything is...strange.

He remembers, clear as if it had just happened, a suspect escaping, the mad scramble at the police station, the chase leading into the park.

And he remembers, clear as if it had just happened, a submarine sinking into darkness, his own death, and a last desperate act to change fate.

He remembers a loving, living wife and a happy infant daughter. He remembers a funeral and a young girl gone quiet with shock and grief. He remembers being a young detective, surrounded by friends and colleagues, eager to rise through the ranks; he remembers spending years alone in prison, waiting for the chair.

He remembers a panicked young man driven to foolhardy desperation and he remembers a remorseless specter haunting him down the years. He remembers drawing his gun, his determination to shoot, and he remembers, simultaneously, watching from afar and screaming at himself not to pull the trigger.

The weight of it is paralyzing. He is caught between two different presents, two different versions of himself. He is remembering things that have never happened, _will_ never happen.

He digs his fingers into his coat, breathes in the pain from his shattered knee, tries to ground himself. What's important is right here, right now. He can have an existential crisis later.

Slowly, very slowly, he tries to stand. It doesn't go well. He makes it most of the way up, but the moment he puts even a sliver of weight on his injured leg, it immediately folds. That knee is clearly not interested in doing even a little bit of work right now.

Right. Of course. He knew that, because he had just done it. Just a moment ago, when he hobbled one-legged over to see if the young man-- _Yomiel_ \-- had survived.

 _Why did you do it?_ he had asked, and Yomiel had said _I don't really know._

He looks down. It's a difficult thing to look at; Yomiel's entire lower body is crushed under the weight of the massive rock. Jowd can't even see his legs, but there's a lot of blood, and it's still spreading, running in red rivulets across the dirt.

He remembers watching, aghast, as the man—somehow--pulled himself off of the ornamental spike that impaled him and flung Lynne to safety, just as clearly as he remembers watching Yomiel's soul, burning bright and blue, manipulating his own unconscious body from beyond the veil.

_Why did you do it?_

Who could ever have guessed?

Yomiel makes a sound, startling Jowd out of his reverie. It's halfway between a gasp and a cry.

Then he begins to...laugh?

Jowd stares. Yomiel's whole frame—what's visible of it—is shaking and he's laughing in heaving, painful, exultant bursts.

Jowd is not quite sure what to make of this.

“I can— _hnnneh_ \--” The man can barely string out one word at a time, but he sounds almost...happy. “I can...f...feel...”

It's only then that Jowd really _realizes_.

Of course. Yomiel was there. Yomiel remembers it all as well.

And if it's strange for Jowd, then how much stranger for Yomiel, to be suddenly aware of having spent the past ten years as a walking corpse, alone and unfeeling.

And yet the man is laughing. How terrible must those ten years have been that _this_ comes as a relief?

He can't imagine.

Yomiel’s laughing finally comes to a shuddering halt.

“D... don't,” he says. He has to stop to take shallow breaths between words. “Don't... don't leave me...alone.”

Jowd looks down at the face that has haunted him for ten years. The man whose life he had blamed himself for destroying. The man who, in turn, destroyed Jowd’s life. Who killed Jowd's wife. Who would have killed Jowd—who _did_ kill Jowd, and Jowd’s best friend, and the young detective trying to save him, and how many others?

Who was driven by the desperation of ten years spent in a hell of solitude beyond Jowd's comprehension.

Jowd reaches down and grips Yomiel's shaking hand in his.

“I won't leave you,” he says. “Just hang on. Help is on the way.”

Yomiel's fingers clench around Jowd's, almost painfully tight, but Jowd doesn't try to pull away.

He hears the footsteps coming down the path only a second before he hears the voice. “Mister! Mister!”

It's the little girl— _Lynne._ He sees her small form running towards him and he remembers what she'll look like, what she'll be like, ten years from now. The young, fiery detective who risked everything to save him from execution. Who cared for his daughter. Who stayed behind on the submarine and watched while the dead departed for the past in one last desperate attempt to change all their fates.

She'll never know, he thinks as she comes to a halt in front of him. She never knew what happened to the ghosts that left her alone in the dark, and now she’ll never know what part she played in that future that never was.

“I called the police, mister,” she says, panting for breath. She must have run all the way to the payphone and back. “I told them what happened. I told them you were hurt. They're gonna send people to help.”

“Good girl,” Jowd says, and there’s a lot more weight to those words than she could know. “You did real good.”

Lynne looks down at Yomiel. She doesn't say anything, but her eyes are wide. This is no place for a child, Jowd thinks. She doesn't need to see this. She's been through enough already.

“You've been very brave. Can you do one more thing for me?” he asks, and Lynne nods eagerly. “Can you go to the park entrance and wait for the police, so they'll know where to go when they get here?”

Lynne nods again and, with one last concerned look at Yomiel, runs back down the path. In truth, Jowd doesn't think there's any way the police could fail to find the scene of the—crime? accident?--but it gets Lynne away from the carnage and gives her something to do, and besides, any amount of time saved could be vital for Yomiel.

“Listen,” he says to Yomiel. “I...I don’t know what’s going to happen to you now. I know you’re innocent of what you were accused of, but you took a girl hostage. And I can’t lie about that. Lynne...she might have passed out, but she’ll remember enough.”

Yomiel stirs. “...don’t...want you to lie,” he says. “What happens...happens. It’s...what I...deserve. I accept that.”

And what _does_ Yomiel deserve, Jowd wonders. He committed terrible crimes, and then undid them. He took a little girl hostage at gunpoint and then sacrificed himself to save her. How can true justice ever be served when there is so much that the courts will never know? How do you judge a man for crimes that no longer exist?

Probably there is no right answer, Jowd thinks glumly; and if there is, he’s not going to uncover it right now, sitting here reeling with pain and adrenaline and the shock of conflicting memories.

“Just...do one...thing for me,” Yomiel says. “...Please?”

Jowd shakes himself. “What?”

Yomiel weakly points his free hand towards the cat Lynne gave to Jowd, still curled up unconscious by Jowd’s foot. “Look after him.”

Sissel. Of course. It’s still strange to think that the friendly if sardonic spirit that guided Jowd out of the darkness was no human after all, but a cat. But then, is it really any stranger than any other part of this story?

“Of course,” Jowd says. He scoops up the limp little body and tucks it away inside his coat. “He’ll have a good life. I promise you that.”

Yomiel smiles.

 

It doesn’t surprise Jowd in the least that Cabanela is the first one on the scene, beating out the official rescue—although not by much; Jowd can hear the sirens approaching even as Cabanela comes down the path. He thinks with some distant amusement that the situation must truly be dire, because for once Cabanela is not dancing or strutting or sashaying along; he’s just running down the path as fast as those ridiculously long legs can take him.

“Jowd! Jowd—ye _gods_.” Cabanela skids to a halt, kicking up dust, and stares in naked shock at the scene before him. It’s rare to see the man look so openly flustered, with his hair in disarray and sweat running down his face. Jowd wonders if he ran all the way from the police station. Probably.

In the fading light he can almost believe that his old friend is just as Jowd remembers him. Certainly the difference is not as stark as it was to see Lynne as a child once again. But there is, still, a difference: this man does not yet have gray at his temples or crow’s feet at his eyes or hard lines at the corners of this mouth. His hair is shorter, his sideburns shaved, his coat brown, not white—of course, he hasn’t yet gotten the promotion that will pay for that particular ostentatious fashion statement.

And a part of him _does_ remember Cabanela in exactly this way, does not find anything odd about the man because why would he, he saw him only a few hours ago, teased him lightly about his nerves over his first big interrogation.

Only another part of him thinks that no, the _last_ time he saw Cabanela, the man was a heap of broken bones stretched out in a chair, blood and grime all over his usually immaculate coat, trying desperately to look as casual as ever and failing because the pain was visible in every line of that lanky frame. He’d given Jowd a jaunty wave that didn’t quite mask the frustration in his eyes at how his role in that night had come to an end, his injuries leaving him grounded and out of the game, only able to hope that Jowd and Lynne and the ghosts could take care of the rest.

And he would never know. Would never know what had happened to his friends after they disappeared into the night. Would never know that five years of effort had not been all for naught.

It’s only then that it really hits Jowd. He can’t tell _anyone_ about all this. Who would ever believe it? Those ten years now exist only in the minds of him and Yomiel—and, he supposes, Sissel—and now his present is haunted, not by ghosts, no, but by the living. The people he knew are gone and not gone, here and not here, and he cannot tell Cabanela _it’s alright we made it we made everything better_ , cannot tell him _you were right all along and I never got to thank you for what you did_ , cannot tell his own best friend anything about the other life that is now clamoring inside his head.

Fortunately, at least, any strange look on his face is probably excusable given the situation. Cabanela certainly doesn’t notice; he’s still staring in shock, first at Yomiel, then at Jowd.

“What...what _happened_ here?” He looks Jowd up and down, and his eyes widen even more as he registers Jowd’s injury. “You’re hurt. Did he--” His eyes flicker to Yomiel. “My gun. He had my gun--”

“No,” Jowd says hastily. Best to nip that idea in the bud as quickly as possible; things look bad enough for Yomiel as it is. “That is—yes, he did have it, but he didn’t shoot me.”

Cabanela frowns. “Then what--”

“You’re never gonna believe this, but...” Jowd gestures vaguely towards the nearby impact site. “Well—you must have seen it, right? The meteorite?”

“Is that what that was?” Cabanela whistles. “I saw a big flash of light. It really landed here?”

“That’s right. And there were a bunch of fragments that broke off. One of them came flying over here, and, well—I was very unlucky, let’s put it that way.”

As if luck had anything to do with it.

Cabanela is clearly having some trouble with this one. “Are you... _sure_ that was it? You’re really sure you got hit by a meteorite fragment and not a bullet.”

It occurs to Jowd at that moment that sooner or later he’s going to have to give a statement about all this, and it’s going to be mighty difficult to figure out how to spin that one. _Well, you see, I had him at gunpoint, and he had the girl at gunpoint, and then suddenly the meteorite comes down, but some time-traveling ghosts interfered and swapped out that big rock to change the fragment’s trajectory, so it hit me, and I shot him out of reflex, but the ghosts swapped the bullet with a sweet potato so instead of being shot he was flung backward onto the fountain. And THEN…_

He really hopes there are no CCTV cameras around here.

“What kind of detective do you take me for?” he says to Cabanela, deflecting as jovially as he can manage at the moment. “You really think I can’t tell the difference between a bullet and a big chunk of space rock?”

Mercifully, Cabanela doesn't push, but he's clearly not willing to easily let go of his guilt. “This is my fault,” he mutters, kneeling down to get a better look at Yomiel. “If I hadn't--”

“It's alright, detective,” Yomiel says. “I...forgive you.”

Cabanela boggles. Jowd has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud.

“You're alive?” Cabanela whispers. “How--”

Yomiel grins. “Must be...the work of the gods.”

“Sure,” Jowd mutters. “Gods.”

Well...close enough, he supposes.

Jowd catches red and blue out of the corner of his eye and turns to see an ambulance racing down the path, followed by two police cars. They're gonna need more than that, he thinks. Getting Yomiel out from under Mino alone is going to take some heavy equipment.

“Yomiel,” he says, as the vehicles screech to a halt and people start pouring out. “I'm probably going to have to go away. They'll want to take me to the hospital.”

Cabanela snorts in disbelief. “If _they_ don't, _I_ will.”

“But you won't be alone, okay?” Jowd goes on. “There'll be people here to look after you.”

Yomiel nods gingerly. He's fading fast, Jowd thinks. Really, it's surprising the man stayed conscious this long.

Jowd catches a scrutinizing look from Cabanela, but seconds later the EMTs are descending and Cabanela doesn't get the chance to ask any questions.

He hangs on to Yomiel's hand for as long as he can while they ask him questions and look at his knee, but it's not long before they're getting him onto a stretcher and he has to let go. Cabanela hovers anxiously, face creased in sympathy at every involuntary gasp Jowd lets out when his knee is moved.

Lynne's not the only one who needs to be given something to do, Jowd thinks with fond exasperation. He can already tell Cabanela is going to flitter anxiously around the scene, making a nuisance of himself, if someone doesn't stop him.

That gives him an idea.

“Hey,” Jowd says to him as they load him into the ambulance. “Do me a favor?”

“Of course,” Cabanela says immediately.

“There's a little girl,” Jowd says. “You probably saw her. Down the path.”

“Yeah...yeah, I saw her. She pointed me this way.” Cabanela raises an eyebrow. “Was she...”

“I'll tell you the whole story later,” Jowd promises. “But right now she needs someone to look after her, I think. At least until they locate her parents.”

Cabanela puts his hands on his hips and stands up straight. “I'm oooooon it. You go get patched up.”

Jowd smiles and salutes as they close the ambulance doors. Lynne and Cabanela will get on, he knows for a certainty. Whether they can keep each other out of trouble is a whole other question, but he'll leave that one alone for now.

Things are out of his hands now, after all. As much as it irks him, there's not much he can do except lay back on the stretcher and let the rescue team do their work--

_Where are we going?_

Jowd jumps in surprise, sending a painful jolt through his knee. One of the paramedics lays a comforting hand on him. “Hang in there. It won’t be long.”

He smiles wanly back, trying to cover up the shock that still has his heart thundering. He knows that voice—but he shouldn’t be hearing it now, surely--

And then--

Everything freezes. The world goes red.

This isn’t right. This shouldn’t be happening. He shouldn’t be back here, not now, not so soon. Because there’s only one way you get to see this place--

_Am I dead?_

No. Impossible. He would have noticed—right? Unless he forgot, like the dead sometimes did--

 _You’re not dead._ The familiar voice carries a note of amusement. Jowd can almost see the smirk. _But I think...I am._

Jowd looks down at himself, at the spot underneath his coat where Sissel is squirreled away. It’s only then that he sees it: that familiar waving pattern of light. The Temsik radiation.

The fragment.

He didn’t even think about where it had ended up. Lost somewhere in the grass, probably. He had never considered this. He should have. He should have thought about the path of the fragment, should have thought about why the little cat was so still and limp.

It’s not right. It’s not supposed to be like this. Everything was supposed to be _better_ now. Everything was supposed to be _fixed_. They were supposed to avert the horrible fate that awaited Yomiel, not simply transfer it to someone else.

 _Can you go back? Fix it?_ he asks, though he’s afraid he knows the answer.

 _Doesn’t work like that. I can’t rewind my own death. That was one of the first things I learned. Besides, I’m not_ exactly _dead, not in the conventional sense._

Jowd curses softly. _I’m so sorry, Sissel..._

 _Hey._ Sissel’s ghostly ears twitch amiably, and for the first time Jowd realizes that Sissel, himself, doesn’t really seem all that bothered by this. _It’s okay. I’m not sure I mind, so much. I don’t feel cold or hungry anymore, for one thing._

_But—you know what this did to Yomiel. What it was like for him--_

_Yes. But Yomiel’s Yomiel, and I’m me. I’m not like him—I understand that now. I’m a cat, and we’re different, I think._ There’s a pause, and for the first time a bit of hesitation creeps into Sissel’s voice. _You’re not...going to leave me, because of this, are you?_

 _No! No, of course not,_ Jowd assures him. _But…the next little bit might be...tricky._

_Oh? Why?_

_Well...we’re going to a hospital._

_What’s a hospital?_

Jowd remembers a number of questions like that over the course of the night. They’d been odd, back when he still took Sissel for an amnesiac human. They make a bit more sense now.

_It’s a place where people go to be treated when they’re sick or hurt. But they don’t usually allow animals in there._

_Oh. One of_ those _places._ Sissel’s voice drips with world-weary disdain at the exclusionary practices of humans.

_Yeah. So you’d better stay hidden, if you can. I’ll get you home as soon as possible._

Sissel’s whiskers twitch in something like a smile. _Hey. You’re looking at the guy who orchestrated your prison break. I think I can manage to lie low in this hospital place for a while._

The world snaps back to normal, color and movement returning in an instant. Jowd takes a deep breath and reaches up a hand to pat the tiny lump in his coat. It stirs, ever so slightly, and he feels a tiny paw press against his finger.

He can’t imagine living—or not living—like Yomiel did, with that meteorite in his chest. But, maybe it _is_ different for cats.

He closes his eyes. The ambulance siren echoes in his ears.

It’s been a long day.

 


	2. graveyard shift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edited 11/19/18 to add a little bit at the beginning that got lost somehow.

The next few hours are something of a blur.

He’s carted out of the ambulance and into the hospital. People come to look at his leg and say serious things to each other, and go away, and come back. They move him from one room to another. Someone tells him he’s going to have to have surgery. He can’t exactly say he’s surprised at this.

As they prep him for surgery, someone takes his coat. “Be real careful with that,” he tells them. “That’s a good ca...coat.”

The young woman gives him a tired but genuine enough smile and folds the coat up carefully. Mercifully, she doesn’t seem to notice anything odd about it.

 _Up to you now, Sissel_ , Jowd thinks.

 

 

He comes to sometime later, swimming up groggily through a haze of fading anesthetic, and for a moment he almost thinks he’s waking up dead again, the way the world is all distant and fuzzy and he can’t quite seem to feel anything.

But no. On second thought, he can feel a slight twist of nausea, the papery sheets beneath his fingers, the pillow under his head. He’s not incorporeal, just a bit doped up.

(He never did like painkillers much, and he gets the feeling he’ll like them even less now.)

The room is brightly lit, but outside the window it’s black. He wonders what time it is. Quite late, probably. But what does it matter? Dawn is no longer a deadline.

A nurse comes by to check on him, ask how he’s doing, and how on earth is he supposed to answer that question right now? There’s a lot of things swirling around in his head and it’s probably the lingering drugs that make them seem dangerously ready to spill out, but he manages to get through her questions without tripping up.

Although he very nearly chokes when she asks him the date. For a moment he can’t remember what year it is.

“Uh, it’s the nineteenth of December, or is it the twentieth by now?” he quickly hedges. “I have no idea what time it is.”

She laughs a little at that one. “It’s the twentieth, but only by about three hours. Can you tell me the year?”

He tells her. He gets it right. Phew.

With the nurse satisfied by the interview and the readings on the machine, it’s not long before they’re wheeling him out of post-op and into a private recovery room. The hospital at three in the morning is a disorienting enough environment even without the aid of anesthesia and being slightly unstuck in time.

“Are you okay to see some visitors?” a nurse asks him once he’s settled into the new room.

Visitors? It’s three in the morning--

And he’s thinking

_Alma, oh, oh shit, oh shit, oh I should have called Alma, I should have found a moment, I don’t know when but I should have oh she’s going to chew my ear off for this--_

and he’s thinking

_Visitors who would come to see me I’m nobody I’m a criminal I’m a death row inmate I pushed everyone away I told them all I was guilty guilty guilty they shouldn’t be here no one should be here now to see me--_

and the nurse is watching him and so he swallows hard and pushes it all away and says, “Yes, yes, please.”

The ensuing wait feels like the longest, hardest one of both his lives.

And when she walks into the room it’s like everything freezes for a moment because it’s Alma, Alma who he saw just that morning, kissed goodbye like it was nothing, like it was every day, only he didn’t, he hasn’t seen her for five years, five years, five years ago she was dead on the ground and their daughter was sobbing and there was blood soaking into the floor of their home and he had to clean up the scene had to shoot his own wife to make it look right fingers shaking on the gun and he remembers the funeral remembers the trial remembers remembers remembers--

He practically launches himself out of the bed, never mind his leg, never mind anything, grabs her close to him and feels her heartbeat against his and he is never, never letting go, not again.

Alma is clearly a little startled by this but she’s accustomed to Jowd’s bear hugs, so after a moment she just laughs and leans into it. “What’s this? Here I thought you’d be trying to go all stoic on me.”

A moment later she asks, much softer, “Are you crying?”

He is. Tears are streaming freely down his face and soaking into his beard and he doesn’t care because she’s alive, she’s alive.

“I missed you,” he mumbles into her shoulder, momentarily not caring that this makes no sense. “So much.”

“It’s...only been a day,” she says with gentle confusion.

“I know. It’s...” A tiny remaining rational part of his brain fights its way to the forefront. “It’s...the drugs. Making me all sappy. Pay it no mind.”

She laughs (gods, he missed that laugh) and pushes him away gently. “Okay, but I think you should lay back down. Don’t want to ruin all the work they did on your knee.”

He lets her settle him back down in the bed and stretch his leg out. It doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t feel like anything at all at the moment. _Looks_ like hell, though. He flips the blanket back over it, but not before Alma sees.

“It’s okay,” he says, catching the look on her face. “I’ll be okay.”

She takes a shaky breath and pushes a smile onto her face. “You know, when I got a call that you were injured, I can’t say this was exactly what I was expecting.”

“It’s hardly what I was expecting either.” He thinks—when was the first time he got injured on the job, in the other timeline? Not for another, oh, half a year. Two broken ribs from falling off a fire escape while chasing a suspect. Seems laughable compared to this.

Alma’s words take a moment to fully sink in. _When I got a call…_

“I’m sorry I—I should have called you myself,” he says, but Alma waves him off.

“You were a bit preoccupied, I imagine,” she says. “It’s alright. Cabanela called and told me what was going on right away.”

Jowd breathes a sigh of relief. Thank the gods. He’d been imagining the news coming to Alma via an impersonal call from the police station or hospital, the kind that left far too many details up to the imagination. Cabanela being the one to make the call was a much preferable thought; the man could put a reassuring spin on practically anything that he put his mind to.

Speaking of which…

“The nurse said _visitors_ ,” he said. “Is--”

“Aboooooout time you noticed me. I was starting to feel mighty left out.”

Jowd leans around Alma to see Cabanela leaning against the doorframe, looking far more composed than anyone had the right to after spending gods-knew-how-long in a hospital waiting room in the dead of night. He wonders exactly how long Cabanela has been there, and how long, despite the teasing words, he would have lingered in the background, unwilling to invade their moment.

“Don’t listen to him,” Alma says cheerfully. “He was the one who told me to go ahead without him. Said he didn’t want to intrude. I told him not to be silly.”

Cabanela saunters forward, casual as anything. His eyes flick over the concealed shape of Jowd's knee.

“How's the other guy?” Jowd asks.

“Don't rightly know,” Cabanela says. “Took them a while to get that rock off of him, but last I heard he was still alive when they finally got him into an ambulance. Some kind of miracle.” He cocks an eyebrow. “Everyone's dyiiiiiing to know what happened, you know.”

He says it carelessly enough, but there's a sharp look in his eye and Jowd internally groans. Cabanela is devilishly hard to lie to at the best of times, and here Jowd hasn't even had time to get his story straight.

“I chased him into the park,” he says slowly, trying to detangle his two sets of memories into something he can actually say out loud. “There was a little girl playing there. He grabbed her, threatened to shoot if I didn't back off...we were in a standoff. That's when the meteorite came down.”

Funny to think how he'd barely noticed it at the time, so absorbed in the moment, not knowing how terribly significant that moment truly was.

“The fragment hit me.” _It wasn't supposed to, but it did._ “And I...I shot him. I didn't mean to.” _Did I?_ “It was just...a reflex. But he--it missed, I think, but he--” _what? he what? he got hit by a sweet potato instead because a ghost dog didn’t want me to be a murderer?_ “He must have stumbled backward, and he hit the edge of the fountain, fell on one of those ornamental spikes. Impaled him through the back.”

Alma gasps. Even Cabanela’s rather stony expression breaks in a slight wince.

“Then the rock...I guess it was knocked loose by the fragment.” _No it wasn’t._ “It started falling, and the little girl—she had passed out, and she was on the ground, right underneath it. I tried to get to her, but I couldn’t make my damn knee work.”

The bitterness comes out more in his voice than he really intended, but perhaps that’s not surprising; there, at least, his memories align. The feeling of watching the rock fall, unable to move quickly enough to stop it, overlaps neatly with the feeling of watching it as a ghost with no power to affect anything at all.

“That’s when he moved,” he says to their stricken faces. “Pulled himself off of the spike, I don’t know how--” _oh, but I do,_ “--grabbed the girl and flung her to safety. It missed her by a second. But it didn’t miss him. He was right underneath it when it came down.”

Alma has one hand over her mouth in shock. “That poor man...that poor girl...is she alright?”

“Frightened half to death, but not a scratch on her,” Cabanela says. He’s looking downright rattled now. “He saved her? He took her hostage and then he saved her?”

How to explain that there was ten years’ difference between the man who held the girl at gunpoint and the man who pushed his own body into harm’s way to save her? Jowd doesn’t truly understand it himself; what happened on that submarine to change Yomiel from a man willing to do anything for revenge to a man willing to do anything to save the same life he had been determined to take?

“I guess…” he says slowly, “...he was panicking, when he grabbed the girl. She was right in his path and he was scared and not thinking and he...took the opportunity. But when he saw her about to die in front of him...I guess he changed his mind.”

Cabanela runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up even more outrageously. “I...don’t know what to make of this.”

It’s funny, in a way, Jowd thinks. _He_ knows that Yomiel is innocent of the crime he was accused of; Cabanela does not, not yet (it took six months to prove him innocent last time; he wonders how long it will take now, with Yomiel alive—assuming he lives). But Cabanela also does not know of the other crimes Yomiel committed, of the things he would prove to be capable of. His perception of the man as a hardened criminal is not _entirely_ wrong, and yet it is based on a mistaken assumption while the true evidence is something he could never know.

Funny.

The room hangs in an awkward, painful silence for a moment.

_So that’s your wife, huh? She seems nice._

Jowd avoids visibly jumping in surprise, but only just. He thinks he’s going to have to have a talk with Sissel about doing that.

 _I’m over here, by the way._ Jowd feels the same signal that Sissel used to guide him out of the prison, a strange feeling like a light blinking on and off in his head, pointing him, this time, to a dark shape on a nearby chair. His coat, neatly folded, with a barely visible bulge on one side.

Huh. So that nurse listened to him after all.

He smiles up at Alma, as disarmingly as he can manage. “I have a...favor...to ask.”

“What? Oh, of course. Anything.” She smiles back, a brave if slightly strained expression.

“Could you take my coat home?”

Alma blinks at him, nonplussed. “Is that all? Of course.”

“Well...” Jowd hedges. “There might be...something in it.”

Alma looks confused, but he sees alarm flicker over Cabanela's face and curses internally. He doesn't know just what Cabanela might think Jowd has hidden, but he can take a guess: something important, something valuable, something secretive—like, say, a certain detective's missing gun.

“It's alright,” he says hastily. “It's—not what you think.”

He's pretty sure of _that_ , at least.

Still looking confused, Alma reaches over for the coat and carefully unfolds it while Cabanela watches with barely visible trepidation. Jowd feels a little guilty, but the looks on their faces when Sissel pokes his tiny head out of the coat pocket are _priceless_.

“A _cat?_ ” Cabanela exclaims. “You snuck a cat into a hospital?”

“Wh—you--” Alma splutters. “You—where did—why--”

“He was at the scene,” Jowd says. “I told Lynne—the little girl—I told her I would take care of him. She was worried about him.”

Alma sighs. “You—of _course_ you did.”

Sissel purrs charmingly and rubs his head against Alma's hand. She strokes the black fur with one finger, almost unconsciously.

“We can manage a cat, can't we?” Jowd says meekly. “He was a stray, I think. Didn't have anywhere else to go.”

“A stray? Poor thing, he's so small...” Alma shakes her head. “I suppose...a cat _would_ be nice to have around. But do you think he'd get along with Kamila?”

Sissel's ears perk up ever so slightly. _The little lady? I'll protect her with my life. Well, such as it is._

“I think they'll be fine,” Jowd says, smiling.

Alma folds up the coat, gently obscuring Sissel from view again. “Well, we have to get him out of here, at any rate. I doubt the staff would be pleased to find a stray cat in the hospital.”

“Terribly unhygienic,” Cabanela mutters.

“But _you_ should get some rest now,” Alma goes on.

Cabanela nods seriously. “We'll leave you be. Get some sleep.”

“Only if _you_ do,” Jowd fires back; he wouldn't put it past Cabanela to stay up the rest of the night and keep going for the entire day on nothing but some industrial-strength coffee. “ _I'm_ not the one who has to go to work in the morning, after all.”

Cabanela's face darkens. “After this debacle, I'm not sure either of us will be going to work in the morning.”

Ah. Of course.

Jowd knows the sting of this failure will haunt Cabanela for a long time, long after any official reprimand has been forgotten—and it will be, soon enough, if things go the way they did before. It'll set back his progress in the Special Investigation Unit for a while, but he'll make it up. He can hardly take all the blame, after all; an entire station full of police officers failed to stop Yomiel escaping. Anyway, no one even died this time.

But he'll remember it, oh, he will. It's easy for those who don't know the man well to think that Cabanela only cares about how splotches on his record might tarnish his reputation, slow his climb up the ranks. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Cabanela loathes mistakes because he holds himself to an impossibly high standard, and he keeps his failures close to his heart.

Maybe I can do better this time, Jowd thinks. Knowing now how this will fester in his friend, perhaps he can head it off, turn Cabanela away from ruminating on this error forever.

“You'll be alright,” he says gently. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

Cabanela snorts derisively. “Not like this.”

No—no, Jowd thinks, not like this; sometimes, they're much worse.

Alma lays a hand on Cabanela's shoulder reassuringly, and Jowd wonders—does she even know what Cabanela _did?_ Did he spill out his guilt to her in the waiting room, the part he played in her husband being injured? Or has he just let it sit inside him?

Probably the latter.

“Oh, go to bed, you idiot,” he says to Cabanela, and enjoys watching the man's exhaustion-bagged eyes widen. “Things will look better in the morning.”

Alma laughs and gently steers Cabanela away with her free hand. “Get some rest. I'll be back soon, love.”

Jowd's heart flutters as she walks away, irrationally frightened to see her go.

“Alma?” he calls after her.

She pauses in the doorway. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

Her face softens into a smile, and, oh, how he missed that smile.

“I love you too.”

Jowd's hand clenches against the sheets as she walks out the door, but—no.

No. He settles down against the pillow and lets out a breath. No, he will not lose her again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello how do hospitals work


End file.
